Albuquerque Public Trans!!

I would be overjoyed if this light-rail was built. I wish we could vote on something like this. Maybe by 2030!

http://www.mrcog-nm.gov/images/stories/pdf/transportation/2030mtp/6_public_transportation.pdf

Joe's Photo of Me

Check it out! Joe's photo of me wearing a luchador mask was picked as photo of the day by the Alibi! Hahaha!

Good job, Joe!

Fourthousanders

It's a new day, a new week. We're back from Denver. How strange I feel right now. Reality has been weird to me. But here I am, I'm not going to complain about it. Denver was nice, really nice. Our friends are great. They allowed us to stay at their house and we visited and checked out different places in Denver. We had some local pizza delivered, it was good. We had some Indian food that I actually finished for breakfast this morning. We visited Great Divide brewery, great brew there. We discovered the "gastropub", which was actually reasonably priced. They had some fantastic french fries there. We had no good coffee, disappointingly. I am impressed that Denver has no major river running though it. Am I mistaken? Well, there's the South Platte, which I'm guessing eventually runs into the Mississippi. Some Denverites are so conceded that they would say that the head of the Mississippi is in Denver. Oh my gosh, I was reading the local Denver magazine. It's called "5280". They are so proud to be exactly a mile high. How funny. For me, a mile high is not such an accomplishment. I was born in a hospital over 7,000 ft above sea level... or maybe a little lower or higher. I don't know the exact elevation of St. Vincent Hospital in Santa Fe. So when we were asked, "are you having altitude sickness" by a local who knew we were from New Mexico I had to laugh on the inside. I have never had altitude sickness...except for maybe one time when we were in Angelfire, NM, but I still blame the powdered donuts.

I have a point to prove to myself. Maybe I'm just sad that New Mexico is over-looked so many times. The truth is, much of New Mexico is covered in nice forests, maybe not Pacific Northwest forest, but great forests none-the-less. We have many tall mountains, and they are not all in the north. Sierra Blanca is in the southern part of the state and it's nearly a 12,000 ft peak. Colradoans are obsessed with their "fourteeners". Don't get me wrong, their mountains are big and impressive, but let's just consider the form of measurement the rest of the world uses for mountains. Everest is 8,848 m, McKinley is 6,194 m, Mt. Elbert (Colorado's highest) is 4,401 m and Wheeler Peak (New Mexico's highest) is 4,011 m. So our two state's highest points are both "fourthousanders". In fact, 390 metres is not that far of a distance when it comes to measuring mountains. So thanks, Colorado for attracting all of the Texans, we'll take Wolf Creek.

Denver

We drove to Denver yesterday. It was a great drive. We were rushing to get out of town and we didn't leave until 1:30pm. We were planning on leaving at 11:45pm or noon. But we hit the road and made great time. We stopped in Las Vegas, NM for some water and Powerade. We continued on through the prarie of northern NM. By the way, the scenery is gorgeous on this drive. You can see the Rockie Mts to your west the entire drive. Raton pass was really interesting driving through. I think at the highest point we were at 8,000 ft. We stopped in Trinidad, which is a beautiful town. Pueblo was a bigger city than we though. Colorado Springs we stopped for food and gas. We made it to Colorado Springs on one ten gallon tank of gas. We ate tacos and then met with our great friends Mike and Jenna. We drank some great Colorado beer then went to bed. Today we will find some coffee then find my aunt and have some sopapillas. Yum!

Christ the Redeemer

I think I'm just going to trun this blog into a Google Earth touring blog... At least until someday when I can afford to actually go to these places.

Burj Dubai

The tallest skyscraper in the world! Over a quarter of a mile tall. Freaking nuts.

Culebra

This is how close we are to 14,000 ft Culebra Peak...

1234

I'm sitting here on my lunch break, sipping some green tea and thinking about our trip to Denver this weekend. I'm really excited! Lindsey and I don't have very many road trips under our belts. This should be really fun. Plus, we kind of need to get out of town for a bit. I feel like it's just a good release to get out of the day-to-day routine. If it was up to me I would take a vacation once a month. Twice a year or more I would like to fly somewhere far. I think this is an accomplishable goal. But the focus is on this weekend. We are heading out to Denver to visit our friends Mike and Jenna. When they lived in Albuquerque we would hang out with them quite a bit. When Lindsey and I first met, Lindsey didn't have her own place and we would hang out at their house a lot at that time.They are great folks and they like a lot of the same things we like. I'm really excited to see if Marble beer lives up the the "real" micro-brewery competition. There are like 9,000,000 breweries in CO, I've heard. So the trip will be about 7 hours or so, depending on traffic and how many times we stop for candy.

I was mapping the different routes to Denver and I stumbled upon something strange in the "street view" option on the route. It looks like Google is taking me through a time warp or something... haha! Wow, I can't believe I was able to convince Lindsey to marry me, I'm such a nerd. Anyway, here is the screen shot of this way cool Google Maps phenomenon!

Dos Equis is the New Beer Sponsor of Balloon Fiesta

Just in time for balloon fiesta! Haha! This cracks me up. Thunderstorms though thursday and showers on Friday and Saturday next week. I really hope it rains good, but I hope it does it in the afternoon. The mornings are really nice when it smells like rain.

Albuquerque is really buzzing this time of year. When I was delivering pizzas I would call hotels during this time of year and try to make reservations just for fun. Front desk people would inform me that I should have made my reservation months ago... It's also a time of year for hotels to jack up their prices way high. What are you willing to pay for a roof over your head and a nice warm shower in the morning? Well, some economist thought about this for the Albuquerque area durning balloon fiesta. Aparently peopel are willing to pay $160a night to stay at the Holliday Inn Express.

I might not make it to the Fiesta this year. I will definityly be chekcing out the Greek Fest though.